Medical professionals once visited patients in their homes. As the number of patients needing treatment grew, it became more difficult for doctors or nurses to sit with sick patients in their homes. Advances in medicine, such as the development of pharmacology, better means of capturing medical knowledge to pass to future generations, specialization over general medical practices, and innovations in medical technology focusing on larger equipment requiring a specialist to operate in physically limited areas (hospitals or testing facilities), have further accelerated the shift from homecare to hospital care or in-facility treatment.
Due to the growth in the number of patients needing treatment, there are insufficient numbers of general practitioners as well as insufficient numbers of specialized doctors to serve the entire population. This problem is further complicated by the concentration of medical professionals in urban and suburban areas and the lack of medical professionals with specialized expertise in rural and certain urban areas. There are also challenges related to a medical professional's training keeping pace with the advancement of medical knowledge since, as medical professionals grow older and, in most cases, busier with patient case loads and administrative duties, it becomes more difficult for them to acquire new knowledge or learn new skills.
The shortage of qualified doctors has resulted in much of the patient interaction to be delegated to nurses, nurse practitioners, or homecare providers. Physicians and hospital administrators are well aware that they are not privy to what actually transpires with respect to interactions and treatment of patients outside their facilities. They must rely upon an elaborate model based on the physical collection of data through written notes, based upon the observations of the medical subordinate professionals who are responsible for the care of patients when the doctor is not present. This is an imperfect process for completely capturing the medical history of a patient post-hospitalization, or for patients with chronic conditions.
Managing or preventing chronic medical conditions will be the challenge of the next generation. Medical conditions do exist outside the presence of the medical profession, and efficiently and accurately monitoring changes in the medical condition of a patient outside the presence of a medical professional is an ongoing process that has not been addressed.
An efficient system for medical professionals to monitor and be informed of the results of delegated procedures will become an essential tool to medical professionals who are now in a transformative stage where they must manage larger patient caseloads, supervise more subordinate medical staff, meet the requirements of recordkeeping by government oversight agencies, and, for the well-being of their patients, supervise subordinate medical staff through oversight, management, review, and assessment.
There remains a need for providing effective and efficient care in a number of settings without requiring the presence of a physician, while still assuring patient medical privacy and keeping the primary physician informed. The person or caregiver who visits patients may or may not have extensive medical training but must provide the first line of care for patients once the doctors' initial procedures are completed. For this reason, knowing as much as possible about what is happening to a patient, and capturing data that may be critical to emergency room personnel, physicians' offices, or nurses, will be vital.